Paul: Hello and welcome to the Boagworld.com. The podcast about all aspects of digital design, development and strategy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It’s the last episode and I’m losing it at this point. My name is Paul Boag and joining me on this week’s show Rebecca Troth, is that right? Rebecca?

Rebecca: Troth, yeah, yeah. That is right fine. People get it wrong all the time but Troth, yeah, that’s right.

Paul: So I got it wrong is what you’re saying! (Laughter)

Rebecca: No, we think we’ve got it wrong. We think it should be pronounced Troth, like you’ve been betrothed.

Paul: Oh, I like that, yeah.

Rebecca: But I think that sounds really posh. If you go “Rebecca Troth” I’m like “No, that doesn’t suit me at all.”

Paul: Oh, okay then. So, Becky Troth.

Rebecca: Yeah, that’s it. All right.

Paul: Marcus Lillington and Andy Clarke. Hello.

Marcus: Hello, hello, hello.

Andy: G’day.

Paul: We haven’t got Ryan today because he forgot about the podcast. The very last one.

Andy: He’s such a Muppet. We can talk about him behind his back.

Paul: That would be a nice mature thing to do. Or we could just say “Nevermind Andy, sorry not Andy, never mind Ryan, we miss you deeply” and be all loving and caring and about it.

Marcus: All of these things assume that he is going to listen to this which he never would.

Andy: No, never. Nobody listens!

Marcus: No chance.

Paul: Got better things to do with his life. So thank you for joining us Rebecca and stepping into Sam’s slightly moist shoes.

Marcus: Err.

Rebecca: No problem. I hope I don’t disappoint.

Paul: So how do you know Sam then?

Rebecca: I met him at the DeliverConf conference in Manchester.

Paul: Ah, so tell us a little bit about yourself, where is it you work and what is it you do? I am guessing you are some form of product/project manager.

Rebecca: Well, I was but that has kind of changed very recently. I am now working at in Ingenico E-payments as a channel manager but it is still very similar in terms of I get projects and it’s all very applicable as you can imagine.

Paul: So what’s a channel manager?

Rebecca: Basically I manage partnerships with other companies. For Ingenico E-payments, and I help with events and things like that.

Marcus: It sounds more account manager-ish to me.

Andy: I was going to say the same thing.

Rebecca: Yeah, it is quite account manager-ey, yeah. It has mini projects along with it which is why I find it exciting.

Paul: So what does the company do? Is it like a payment gateway?

Rebecca: Yes, and Ingenico are one of the biggest payment companies in the world. If you ever go to Tesco or things like that, places like that, they are mostly known for their chip and pin pads. But then the E-payment side, which is what I work for, controls, has like payment gateways online.

Paul: Right.

Rebecca: Yeah, we are an international payment gateway.

Paul: This is obviously at the edge of my knowledge. Can you tell? Whenever you get…

Rebecca: It’s at the edge of mine as well, don’t worry. I’m just blagging it completely!

Paul: So when you get onto things like payment gateways, you know, I just start dribbling out of the corner of my mouth. It all seems very grown up. I think that’s what it is, it’s like this is handling people’s money and encryption and important things. I go “Err, that’s scary, I want to run away”

Rebecca: I think we are trying to make it less scary. I think that’s why they brought me in.

Paul: Ahh, so you’re…

Rebecca: Because I find it scary too I’m just, like, trying to make it fun. Payments can be fun!

Paul: Yeah! I like… You’re not convincing me of that Rebecca. I’m sorry.

Rebecca: I’m trying to convince myself I think.

Paul: You’re talking later about the gamification of check out. I think I might get…

Rebecca: Yeah, you see.

Paul: I might get the giggles at that. Because that just sounds like a crazy magic.

Rebecca: It is voodoo. Yeah.

Paul: I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing about that later.

Marcus: Well shopping can be fun, can’t it? So…

Rebecca: Exactly. The payment it is the least most fun. Because that’s when you actually see the money leave. I think that’s why it’s got a bad name.

Paul: Yeah. It depends which side of the equation you are on.

Rebecca: That’s true.

Paul: If you are a merchant then it is great times.

Paul: Because I love it, I get… I sell a few little courses and books and things online and every time I make a sale I get a little notification and it’s great because it feels like you are earning money for doing nothing because you could be in a restaurant and suddenly you get this “ping” you’ve sold something and it’s the best feeling in the world.

Marcus: All my adult life, Paul, I have been receiving royalties for songs I wrote 35 years ago. How cool is that.

Paul: I know, how cool is that.

Marcus: Yet, I can’t remember, I think it was Carol King, the great songwriter from the 60s and 70s. She said “writing songs and getting paid for it is the only way you can earn money when you are asleep.” Or something like that.

Paul: Yeah. Which is awesome. Although, you must get to the point, I know you’ve got to this point because I have heard you say this before, of almost taking it for granted a little bit and then when the royalty payments aren’t quite as high as you expected you are a bit disappointed.

Marcus: Yeah, now I’m onto the point now where the royalty payments are so low it doesn’t really make any difference at all. But yeah, Paul, I’ve spent £1100 for every thousand pounds I’ve spent, I’ve earn’t, throughout my life, so yes, obviously.

Paul: Do you have any kind of residual income like that Andy? I suppose you’ve got that… You are doing that at the moment aren’t you? With your style guide things?

Andy: Well the style guide thing should hopefully be on sale by the time that this podcast goes out, if anybody wants to go to inspired.guide. Which is a great domain name isn’t it? I mean I couldn’t believe that there was a dot guide domain name.

Marcus: Ooo.

Paul: There you go.

Andy: Anyway, so I’ve done that. Those will be on sale hopefully by the time this show goes out. I sold books, obviously. You know, I still get the odd royalty here and there from people buying hard-boiled.

Paul: Oh yes, yes, yes. Of course.

Andy: Once in a blue moon, smashing magazine keep sending me cheques, which is nice. Once in a very blue moon I’ll get a royalty cheque from Transcending CSS which I wrote in 2005 or six. The last one was about $0.75 US. (Laughter) It was hardly worth cashing it.

Paul: Yeah, it probably costs more to cash.

Andy: Yeah. But it is nice, I mean that’s one of the holy grails isn’t it? To make things that people keep buying and then you don’t have to to get paid for the hours that you work, I suppose that’s what it is about.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Paul: Hmmm.

Rebecca: I have a similar thing. I have a YouTube channel.

Paul: Oh do you, you make money off that?

Rebecca: I wouldn’t say I make money, I think I’ve earn’t about five dollars over the past six months. That’s not enough for them to pay it out to me so it just sits there.

Paul: Oh right, yeah.

Rebecca: May be in like 30 years they will send me a cheque for 50 quid.

Paul: It is amazingly misleading. It’s like all of these things it’s sounds like… I’ve got a reasonably big following but you know, I don’t make… I mean books, royalties from books, I have never, you know, they are a few thousand pounds but for the amount of effort that goes into creating a book I’m never sure it’s really worth it. But then I don’t ever seem to want to give up on the idea of creating a residual form of income. It’s like at the moment I am creating a online course about persuasive design. I’m taking the workshop that I ran and turning it into a video course. It is like 50 videos and hours of material and it’s going to take me weeks to create and then I will probably sell three copies of its. You know, but there you go.

Marcus: The thing is is that it is too niche to make millions. You need to be doing something that appeals to millions of people, I think.

Paul: Yeah, I mean like you did, to be fair.

Marcus: Yeah, I mean, or to use a more up to date version would be something like Basecamp where obviously every company in the world, or not even companies, any group could use basecamp to manage whatever it is that they are doing. But if you… Well, 37 signals ended giving up all their other apps and products didn’t they because it was the only one that was really kind of making any money so they decided they would just focus on that completely. So yes, you need to appeal to a wide audience.

Paul: It’s funny isn’t it because you see so many people rave about or focus on this as a potential revenue stream but it is really quite hard to make work. What I like, which I’m really pleased with in my business at the moment, is the fact that it is a nice mix of stuff. I’ve got some residual income type stuff, I’ve got some clients stuff, I’ve got mentorship retainers which is a monthly ongoing stuff, I’ve got project stuff, I’ve got training, I’ve got advertising. Having a mix I think works quite well, I like that.

Marcus: Variety is the spice of life, Paul.

Rebecca: Exactly, yeah.

Marcus: I think if I can come up with any more clichés throughout the show.

Paul: You’re on a roll, yeah.

Rebecca: We will turn them into T-shirts.

Marcus: Yes.

Paul: Do you know someone did that in the very early days of Boagworld when we were actually popular because nobody else was doing this. There was somebody decided to take all of the bizarre things that we have ever said and turn them into a range of T-shirts.

Marcus: I vaguely remember that, now that you’ve mentioned it. Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Rebecca: Were they popular? Did they make… Do you still make money from them?

Paul: Well we never made any money from them. (Laughter) They just went for it. They did ask permission, which was fine. No, I don’t think they got rich. But the best one was still the Hands to Boagworld.{Transcribers note: Called Hands to Boag arranged by Andrew Rothman} So essentially somebody took one of Marcus’s big hits from when he was a popstar and they turned it into a song about the podcast and about web standards and stuff like that. It was brilliantly done, wasn’t it?

Marcus: It was.

Paul: It was really funny. I ought to dig it out sometime.

Marcus: It’s out there somewhere.

Rebecca: I was going to say, I’m going to need to hear that.

Paul: It is. You know, it’s it’s very dated now because it was the time when we were actively trying to promote and push web standards as being a thing because everybody was still table based.

Marcus: It was 11 or 12 years ago.

Paul: Yeah! Bloody hell.

Marcus: Isn’t it time to retire yet?

Paul: I bet this is the point where we say to Rebecca – 11 years ago, how old were you?

Rebecca: 11 years ago I would have been 13.

Paul: Shit. (Laughter)

Marcus: Oh, you’re younger than my daughter.

Andy: Yeah I was going to say, you are younger than my son.

Paul: Dear me.

Andy: Anyway, at least you are old enough to drink though Rebecca. And we should talk about Gin.

Rebecca: That is a bonus, we should. Gin is my ultimate favourite drink.

Marcus: Really?!

Rebecca: It is my drink of choice whenever I go out. I might have had a couple this weekend.

Marcus: Lovely. I tried a Spanish gin this weekend called Larios and it is 12 years old and it is really nice. And another one that I can’t remember the name of because I was probably too drunk. There you go.

Rebecca: Too much Larios by that point.

Marcus: Yes, but reallt nice. That is my recommendation for the week. Marcus’ tip for the week.

Andy: Tipple for the week, Marcus, Tipple.

Marcus: Tipple, very nice.

Andy: Yes.

Rebecca: Oh, good.

Andy: My recommendation of gin for the week is…

Rebecca: I think my favourite gin would be the Edinburgh ones.

Andy: That is nice actually. That is nice. I’m going to mention Margaret River Gin as a gin from West Australia which is calls West Winds and they do a few and the Sabre one is really, really nice. If you find that in a bottle shop somewhere, very nice indeed.

Marcus: I have a friend called Alistair, I might have even said this on the podcast before but he gets blamed every time. I mean, with good reason! He is the kind of person who you would be walking out of the door and he’ll hand you another pint. You know, one of those. Anyway, my son-in-law came home late one night to their house where they live and my daughter said to him “Why are you back at 11.30” “Oh, it’s Alistair’s fault.” And he’s never met him before until that evening. So yes, that’s my little story.

Paul: There we go.

Andy: Well before we get on with the actual show we should just talk about Fast and Furious 8 which I went to see last week. Not as good as Fast and Furious 7, Paul. Which was the best action movie ever made.

Paul: Oh, okay. I am absolutely fascinated by this.

Andy: But you were in it obviously. You took a bit of the Vin Diesel role (laughter)

Paul: Don’t bring it up again! Rebecca, they have decided that I look like a shrunken Vin Diesel.

Rebecca: Okay!?

Paul: Yeah, see! See, delusional. Rebecca agrees with me. Carry on Andy, get it out of your system.

Andy: So it was actually a really good film. I can recommend it if you get a chance go and see it. But not as good as Fast and Furious 7 which was the best action movie ever made but. But then we only have a few weeks to wait before we see you in the Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2.

Paul: Oh yeah, yeah. Shut up.

Andy: You’re in that as well.

Paul: (Laughter) So, my question, Andy, because I’ve never watched any of the Fast and Furious movies because I have taste. But if I chose to watch them would I have to watch them from the beginning or can I just dip in at number 7 for example?

Andy: I think you can probably dip in that number 5.

Paul: Okay.

Andy: You wouldn’t miss out if you… I mean, you should watch them all the way through. There are a couple of howlers but no, if you really… if you wanted to really cut it short start at number 5. 5,6,7 and 8 are tops.

Paul: Right, I will take that under advisement. Thank you for your contribution. Okay, let’s do our sponsor and then get into the discussion otherwise this show is going to go be going on for ages. By the way, just so that everybody knows, Ryan is now back and is asking to be brought on the show and I have told him it is too late and I have rejected him permanently.

Rebecca: Why don’t we just make him do a penalty?

Paul: Yeah, I like that idea. To be honest I don’t want to bring him on because it was complicated enough getting this show started anyway. Over Skype and Zencast and all the other tools. He’s missed his moment I’m afraid.

Marcus: I agree Paul, that really got me worried when… I thought you were going to try it then and I got really depressed for a second.

Paul: No, I just think the editing, your job of editing this season has been bad enough as it is.

Marcus: Yes.

Paul: I actually, it’s not often I have sympathy for you Marcus but over that I have.

Marcus: Yeah, last weeks was a new low.

Paul: Yes, exactly.

So, let’s talk about our first sponsor which is Teacup Analytics. So just to remind everybody what Teacup Analytics is, it is a set of reports that sits on top of Google analytics. So it takes Google analytics and makes sense of it and provides it in a set of really clear, easy to digest reports. Now, I thought I would do something different as it is the last show of the season. All the way through the shows with the sponsors what I normally do is I use their talking points to talk about them. But I thought just for this last one, I haven’t actually asked their permission, I hope they are all right with this, I thought I would share my personal impressions of using them. So, Teacup Analytics is something that I have been using for quite a long time. I think for me it’s been really nice because whenever I open Google analytics, and I know everybody is different and some people are very kind of data orientated, but I open up Google analytics and then I kind of stare at it a bit blankly and never really dig into it. I know in theory the kind of things that I should be looking at because, well, I am supposedly a professional and kind of understand this stuff. But finding what is actually useful is not never particularly straightforward when it comes to Google analytics. You always have to use filters and all kinds of things. I don’t get it, I find it a really difficult interface to get my head around. So for me, Teacup Analytics has been great for just getting answers to the questions that I need answers to. Because you go in and it has a list of reports and essentially all of those reports are various questions. Questions that you might want to ask and you just go through and find the questions that you want to ask and you go from there. So yes, that’s essentially… Sorry, the reason I’m stumbling is because Ryan is now pinging me on Skype trying to get… he is desperate to get on the show. I’m just going to pause for a moment and I am going to tell him to go away because he just won’t seem to give up. “Sorry mate, too late, recording already.” Right, what was I saying? I have completely…

Marcus: Questions, questions from Teacup Analytics.

Paul: Oh yes, it’s got all these questions which are really straightforward and you can just go to the questions that you need and love it. If I’m honest, I’m not a great fan of their branding. It’s all a bit kind of nerr and a bit cutesy and bit kind of “Ooh, there’s teacups everywhere” which isn’t really my taste. But the functionality is really good and I guess you can’t reject an app just because you don’t like the branding. Although I do regularly…

Marcus: Andy could.

Andy: I usually do.

Paul: And I do actually regularly… Yeah, yeah. (Laughter) I do it with apps. I can’t have an iPhone app which hasn’t got a nice icon. That is impossible. But anyway, these guys obviously really know their stuff and you don’t just get access to the functionality of the app, if that makes sense, I feel like you get access to their knowledge as well. There is lots of advice and stuff like that as well. So there you go, you can find out more about teacup analytics by going to Teacup Analytics. And thank you guys, so much for sponsoring the entire season. That is absolutely awesome.

Round Table Discussion

Paul: Right, shall we do some discussion-ey stuff? So, Marcus, I was wondering if you could kick us off?

Marcus: I could. This weeks little talk is going to be entitled “Don’t worry be happy” after the song by Bobby McFerrin. This isn’t meant to be a kind of glib, pull yourself together if you are depressed kind of thing. If you are depressed you are depressed, but this is more if you are a worrier. I know that certain people on the show suffer, have suffered from depression over the years so I am not trying to pick on that particular subject. But I do think I am pretty good at…

Paul: Not worrying.

Marcus: … Yeah, basically. I talked about this a few shows ago where, I can’t remember exactly what I was talking about, but it was sort of a starting point down this road. And I thought “Well, it’s the last one in the series so I’ll talk about that.” Now, of course I could be the luckiest person alive. All of my “It’ll turn out okay, it always does” could just simply be luck or fate but we know that that is silly because I am an old person and if… you can’t be lucky forever. So I thought to myself why am I able to kind of look on the bright side. And then I started to sort of think why do people actually worry? And I thought it’s things like they worry about not being good enough, people won’t like them, being talked about behind their backs or letting other people down. And I… Basically all of those things are mostly to do with what other people think of them. And the actual reasons why people don’t, why people tend not to be liked aren’t any of those reasons. They are things like being lazy or unreliable or two-faced or lying to people, that kind of thing. So I guess what I am saying is that if you are not one of those things, if you’re not lazy or two-faced then you probably haven’t got any reason to worry. All this stuff about not being good enough, people don’t actually worry about those things they worry about just being, people being unreliable. Also I think that you need to recognise when things are good. Because I think people tend to only kind of notice when things are bad. And things are good generally, I assume, for most people, most of the time. This kind of recognising when things are bad is something only happens not that often. I guess you do need to be prepared to work hard and in some cases when things are going badly you need to make difficult decisions and you need to be prepared to do that. But, as I just said, making difficult decisions should be something that only happens once in a blue moon. Even working really hard is something you shouldn’t be doing all the time, in my experience anyway. Final point on this is don’t revel in moaning and complaining. This seems to be… This seems to be a very much, I don’t know, is it a British thing or not? But British people do seem to do a lot of moaning. It seems to be like the default thing. It’s like you come in and somebody is “Oooh, this was rubbish and then that happened and that was awful” and frankly that pisses me off. (Laughter) So what I try to do is try to find the positive in whatever somebody is moaning about and I find that that soon shuts them up. So yeah, quite a simple really. Stop thinking about… Stop worrying about what other people think of you and work hard and try and notice when things are positive and the chances are you are more likely to be happy than not. That’s it.

Paul: For me I think it is actually not about other people, because I have a lot of… anxiety is something that I struggle with quite a lot and it’s not about other people. What it is with me is it’s about my mind will run ahead and start picking apart scenarios that haven’t actually happened. So, for example let me… Let’s say I’ve got to return something to a shop, because it’s defective, right? My brain will run through every potential scenario of what will happen when I get in that shop. So it will say, it will presume that the person is going to be a problem, I then come up with what would I say? How would I respond? If they say this, what will I say? Da da da da da da. All right? So I spent a lot of my life living in a reality that doesn’t actually exist. Mark Twain said it really well. He said “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life most of which have never happened.” And that is exactly where I am at. Now what I have found that has been really helpful for the last few years and has seriously reduced the level of anxiety is actually, believe it or not, an app.

Marcus: Oh right!

Paul: It is an app that you will be very familiar with Marcus because we are often mistaken for it. Which is an app called headspace. Have you come across this?

Marcus: Oh right, no, no, no.

Paul: Right. So often people go, “Oh, you are Headspace”, “No, no, no, that’s Headscape. Two different things.” But Headspace is a meditation app and it has this whole section on anxiety… Well, you can basically select from lots of different… Whatever your particular thing is, whether it is not sleeping, anxiety, depression, whatever. And positive stuff like being more creative and that kind of thing. And it takes you through different exercises and the anxiety one I find is really good and it’s about just really a lot of the time just stepping out of the way that you are feeling and recognising when you are going down this cycle of whatever it is. You know, imagining scenarios that will never happen and that kind of stuff. So personally I have found that really, really helpful. So yeah, that’s the thing with me.

Andy: Hmm, Sue does that.

Paul: I’m sure Andy has got something to say on this subject.

Andy: Yes, Sue does this. She is often just thinking about every possible kind of scenario. To the point where, you know, she spends a lot of the time not sleeping because she is just running through every possible permutation in her head. We actually did this thing, because I was constantly saying to her, you know, “There is no point in worrying, worrying doesn’t change what it is that is going to happen.” So we actually set up, in fact I wrote about it in a book. I used it in as an example in a book years ago. But we thought about setting up this website, we should have bloody well done it, it could have been that residual income. Which we called Worrisome. And basically what happens is that people can go on to the website, they can browse through all the categories of things to worry about. You know, the bomb and Tony Blair and all the stuff that you might be worried about. Pay 5 pound a month and somebody else will worry about it for you. Now, it doesn’t take away Tony Blair… (Laughter)

Rebecca: That’s a brilliant idea.

Andy: It doesn’t take away Tony Blair or the bomb or Donald Trump or whatever but you just don’t have to worry! Somebody else is worrying about it for you. And then you get a reminder at the end of every month that says it’s time to start worrying about Tony Blair again! Then you pay another 5 pound. I’m sure we should have absolutely… We had worrisome.com at one point which I registered and we never did the website. So yeah, worrying is no good to anybody.

Marcus: That’s fantastic.

Paul: Yeah, but it’s very hard to stop yourself if you are wired in that way. Because, you know, you say that worrying doesn’t help but there is a part of, well I mean obviously I agree with you, but there is a part of my mind that says well “Well, it means that when I go into that scenario of returning that thing that is defective, I’ll have all of the answers already in my head.”

Andy: Yeah, I’ve heard that one.

Paul: You know, and I will know how to respond in the right way. So I am preparing myself for that situation. The trouble is to some degree I wouldn’t want that part of my character taken away because that part of my character in other situations is incredibly useful. For example, when I sit down to write a blog post I can churn out a blog post incredibly quickly, or even a book, and the reason is because my subconscious has been working on that for weeks. You know, because it has been running through ideas and it has been thinking about things in advance so I never start from a blank canvas. So in some ways I think we often focus on the defects of our personality and we see them as bad things but almost all of those defects have a positive associated with them. One of the things that I found really interesting, Stephen Fry a few years ago did a documentary on bipolar people.

Marcus: Yes.

Paul: And that was absolutely… I don’t know whether you saw it Marcus…

Marcus: I did.

Paul: Yeah, one of the things that I found most fascinating is that he asked all the people he said “If I could give you a button that if you pressed would take your bipolar away would you press it?” And almost without exception they said “No.” That for every down element of who they are there is an up element as well. Which is a really important thing to remember I think.

Marcus: I think in your case, Paul, you just need to recognise when what you are worrying about is a waste of time.

Paul: Yeah.

Marcus: When it’s useful, yeah, do it. But I think that’s all it is, it’s about… Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Andy: There is one upside, there is one upside to me and I think to everybody else about me being here in Australia and not being confronted with Brexit every single day of the week is that I have been moaning less, this goes back to Marcus’s point, I’ve been moaning a lot less. I think that the less that you kind of, I don’t know, dig yourself into a hole, the better you are going to feel about things in general. I’m not saying that I’m never going to moan about Brexit again but, you know, if you are just constantly in that kind of moaning, groaning cycle about whatever it is that is your pet subject, mine being Brexit, then actually to be an honest it doesn’t affect your mental health in any positive way whatsoever. And the other thing I have noticed, I’m going to get myself into trouble here, as a middle-aged white man, but have you noticed…

Paul: Oh dear.

Andy: … Have you noticed that the people who professionally complain on Twitter about everything from, I don’t know, patriarchy or whatever, have you ever noticed that they never moan at the weekends when nobody is watching. They only moan during the week when they are going to get maximum attention.

Paul: To be honest, I haven’t noticed that Andy. And I’ll tell you why I haven’t, is because I have kind of reached a point, it’s about controlling what you are exposed to which is what you were talking about with Brexit, I have actually gone through Twitter and I have blocked pretty much every word you could possibly imagine that feeds me with negativity.

Andy: Hmm, me too.

Paul: So as a result I don’t actually see the whole breadth and depth of what is on Twitter any more. That has had to be a conscious decision and that’s not a kind of… It’s not that I am ignoring what is going on in the world, I still know that we are on the brink of nuclear war and all of that but I control the sources by which I receive that. And the degree to which I receive that. Because you are right, being pumped with that kind of negativity the whole time is problematic and it does… It moves you towards a negative mindset. But anyway, we are spending quite a long time on this and I want to get on to, to be honest I want to get onto what Rebecca wants to talk about because this idea of gamifiying a checkout process, what the hell is that Rebecca?!

Andy: It sounds fun.

Rebecca: It’s, it does sound fun, it is fun. Basically Ingenico have teamed up with a company called Luckycycle to bring merchants a sales promotion tool which sounds boring at this point but it is called gamified checkout so it can’t be that boring. Basically what it does is that when you checkout, you check out normally and you might have a banner that says you have a one in 10 chance of winning the value of your basket back. So merchants will do this instead of giving you 10% off. For a whole month they will say “Okay, one in 10 of you have got the chance to win the whole value of your basket back.”

Paul: Ahh.

Rebecca: So that might, you know, make you want to actually “Oh well, I will get that extra pair of socks or whatever I was going to buy extra. Because I might actually get it all for free.” And then, you pay as normal, check out as normal and then at the end because they have integrated with our payments gateway you get presented with a game and so you can have anything from a wheel of fortune, a slot machine, just a gift box that opens. Basically it is up to the company as to whatever they want to show the customers. Then they play this game and if they win their basket is automatically refunded to them.

Paul: Okay?!

Rebecca: And that’s it, they have wone. And then obviously there’s the ability to share it on Twitter and Facebook. But yes, the reason I like it so much is because I can imagine getting to the end and winning.

Paul: Yes, which obviously…

Rebecca: And, yeah. But then you’d be like, “Dammit, I should have bought so much more!”

Paul: That’s, yeah. I’m trying to wrap my head around that. I’m trying to think how I feel about it. Have you got any stats over conversion rates. Does it work?

Rebecca: Yeah. It does work, luckycycle have been doing it for a while and they… Let me see if I can find some stats for you…

Paul: Because that’s really interesting. And I am trying to decide whether I disapprove of it. There’s a part of me…

Rebecca: Yes, it is a bit mixed isn’t it? Because it is like gambling.

Paul: Yeah, it’s a kind of… And also, I mean, could you just ignore the game if you wanted to.

Rebecca: Yes. If you…

Paul: Okay, so it’s not actually getting in the way of the checkout process.

Rebecca: No, it doesn’t come until the very, very end. So after you’ve had your payment confirmation and your order confirmation then the game will pop up and be like “Do you want to play to win your basket back.” Then you click play and if you win then you… it gets automatically refunded. Because it’s integrated with the payments Gateway. So the merchant doesn’t have to manually refund it.

Paul: Yeah, you can do that.

Rebecca: But it says “Tests by Luckycycle show that by adding gamification merchants can increase the volume and the value of transactions and boost conversions by up to 15%.”

Paul: Oh, okay. I like that. It always amuses me…

Marcus: It could become a form of gambling though! I’m going to have another go to win, I’m going to spend £2000 this time because I won last time."

Rebecca: Yeah, It’s that 1 in 10. If I order something 10 times…

Paul: Yeah,

Marcus: I think that’s why you were thinking “Do I approve or disapprove” that the… I think people could become addicted to it? Maybe?

Paul: See this is really interesting because I do a course, well I was talking about it earlier, on persuasive design, and one of the sections we talk about is the efficacy of different things. And obviously there are dark patterns which are particularly manipulative but what consists of a dark pattern and what doesn’t? So for example, one of the things that they were showing was somebody included a screenshot where one button was much bigger than the other because they wanted to push people to click on a certain button rather than the other. Now I don’t consider that a dark pattern, I think that is just a design decision. So it is a very blurry line, so the line that I have kind of have come up with which I talk about on the course is that you shouldn’t endeavour to get somebody to do something that at some level they don’t want to do. So it’s, instead it’s about persuading people to take action now and to take action with you rather than the competition, okay? So in this case it is like, I don’t… You know, would it encourage someone to actually make a purchase that they wouldn’t normally make. I don’t know? Would it encourage them to make a purchase with you rather than your competition. Absolutely. So that’s why it’s a bit, kind of, I don’t know. Do you know what I mean?

Rebecca: Yeah.

Paul: But it is an interesting idea. I like it.

Rebecca: Yeah, I mean it’s only launched about a week ago. So it’s…

Paul: Right, it would be interesting to see what feedback you get from it.

Rebecca: Definitely, yeah. And there are ways… Obviously there are games that are a lot less gamble-ey, so you don’t have to use a slot machine it can just be a gift box that opens and then it’s just a chance whether you get it or not. Or a scratch cards which is still a bit gamble-ey but…

Paul: See, the other thing that actually… Do you know, there is a situation where I would use it. And this is how I would use it, and it’s a weird way of using it and it uses a psychological trick called reciprocation. Reciprocation is the idea that if I give you an unconditional free gift then you are so grateful to me that you feel indebted to me in some way and you want to give back. So an example of it would be if if MailChimp, who I send out my newsletters via, suddenly one day through the post totally unexpected they sent me a little kind of vinyl figure of their MailChimp logo person, Freddie.

Rebecca: Yes.

Paul: Now that was a free gift. Oh and also there was a woolly hat as well in the shape of Freddie. Now that was completely un-… I had no idea it was going to come and it was a lovely little surprise and it was wonderful and so what I immediately did is because I felt grateful for what they had done for me I put the little hat on my head, took a photograph of myself and put it on Twitter and said “Thank you MailChimp!” And that was reciprocation. Now that is different from offering a discount. With a discount it becomes part of, or a free gift, you know how they sometimes say “Sign up today and you will get this carriage clock.” You know, they always do that with old people don’t they and life insurance,…

Rebecca: Yeah, you get a free pen.

Paul: Exactly. So that then becomes a part of the transaction, the value of the pen or the carriage clock or whatever becomes part of the transaction. So if you use your gamification thing and you tell people upfront that you are going to do that then effectively what you’re… That becomes a part of the transaction. People do the calculation, “Oh, well I’ve got a 1 in 10 chance of winning this.” Which is fine, and that is a perfectly okay way to do it but I think what I would be tempted to do is just do the calculation behind-the-scenes, not tell anyone you were doing it, or going to do it and then when someone gets to the end of the checkout you have a little kind of gift thing which they click on, it opens, and you don’t even show the gift box if they have not won. So they have already decided, you have already done the 1 in 10 chance and just say “As a free gift we have selected you to randomly get a refund. This is all for free. Share the great news with your friends on Twitter.”

Rebecca: And Facebook, and everywhere else.

Paul: Yeah,

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. And it has been made so it can be used like that.

Paul: Hmmm, absolutely.

Rebecca: So…

Paul: It’s all about how you choose to use these things isn’t it really.

Rebecca: Exactly, yeah.

Paul: Cool. I think that’s really interesting. Cool, all right. Marcus, do you want to… Have we done you haven’t we! Sorry. Andy…

Marcus: See, that’s how much you listen to me Paul.

Paul: I zoned out. I said quite a lot! I got quite into your section.

Rebecca: Yeah, I was really interested in that one. It kind of verged on impostor syndrome as well, when you’re worrying about… One of those things.

Marcus: That’s what we talked about, yeah, way back. I think actually, I think Sam spoke about imposter syndrome. But yes,

Andy: I think he did.

Marcus: It’s… No, I won’t go back there because we will run out of time! I was going to start talking about it again, but I won’t. Steps away from the microphone.

Paul: So Andy, what have you got for us?

Andy: Well, this entire season I have been talking about books which I really like or would like to buy and generally speaking Paul Boag has universally derided. So we are not going to change that habit at all! So we are going to talk about a book though because I am old and I was looking through my RSS feeds yesterday and a little blog post came up by my old friend Veerle Pieters. I love Veerle Pieters, she is one of these brilliantly talented graphic designers, web designers that just consistently puts out amazing work. You know, she doesn’t shout about it she just writes these beautifully understated blog posts about her process and she is one of my favourite people and she is one of my favourite designers. If you are not aware of the Veerle Pieters, over in Belgium, then you are missing out. Anyway, this blog post that she wrote was about some work that she had been doing recently on this rather dodgy looking book. I’ve got to say.

Paul: Ahh, it is superb! It is a really good piece of work that she has… it’s just amazing.

Andy: She’s been doing this fabulous kind of cover and interior design work for User Experience Revolution. Which is a book by somebody, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of him, he’s kind of… he was there at the beginning of the web and has kind of faded away into obscurity for the most part. (Laughter) A guy called Paul Boag. This book, User Experience Revolution actually looks rather good. And I haven’t read it yet because I am too tight to actually buy a digital copy. The print copy apparently ships, or will start to be shipped from Smashing Magazine by the time that this podcast goes out. But I am too tight to buy one and I have been waiting for somebody to actually slip me a free copy which, I don’t know, I think I’m too old and obscure and…

Marcus: Me too.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think I could do with a free copy of that.

Andy: … Out of touch. So nobody is actually, they used to send me books, you know, publishers used to send me books to review. I never reviewed them! But you know, I used to quite like getting a book in the post. That used to be lovely. Anyway, this one, User Experience Revolution, actually looks really rather good. And it’s all about being an advocate in your business or in your company for user experience. From the looks of it it has got nine chapters which goes all the way through getting real about user experience design, whatever that might be and about how to sell the benefits of user experience design in your company to create what Paul has called a customer experience evangelist. And then how to get support in your business for this approach from management, et cetera. Proof of concepts, great working practices and then how you can transform the culture of an organisation to focus much more on having a vision for user experience. And I think that whether or not you are directly involved in UX this should be a book that we kind of, you know, as design agencies actually give away to our clients. You know, because nobody else is going to read it!

Marcus: So we need a box of them, is that what you’re saying Andy?

Andy: We could actually do with a free box of them if you are out there Vitaly Friedman and you are… I know that you are going to have a warehouse full of these dusty books. So if you would like to send some to us then we can give them away at our local school or car boot sale or to a client perhaps, who might benefit from this kind of book. And that is nmy book of the week, User Experience Revolution by Paul Boag.

Paul: And I think that is possibly the worst of the entire season’s worth of books that you have mentioned. It just gets worse and worse and worse, every week. I mean why the… I mean I thought buying some style guide from 1945 was stupid but why on earth would you want to buy that piece of shit? I just…

Andy: Well, you know. I’ve been nasty to you for the past few weeks on the old Paul Diesel thing so I thought, no, it’s the last episode of the season so I thought that I ought to say something nice about you for a change.

Paul: Thank you very much Andy. I am very appreciative. And I’ve got to say, I mean the design is just beautiful. She does just such an incredible job and I am so grateful for her. And that’s it now, every book I ever write, same illustrator. It’s got to be. So there we go, and just so you know, dear listener, I have just pinged everybody in Skype with a copy of the e-book.

Marcus: Yeah, thanks Paul!

Rebecca: Thanks.

Paul: Now, everybody who has paid for the e-book that is listening to this is now angry and resentful that you guys get preferential treatment. I try and treat everybody fairly and equally but no.

Andy: That’s okay because I’ve just tweeted the link to the dropbox!

Marcus: That’s my fee for the season Paul. There you go.

Paul: Oh, okay, no that’s fair enough. If you put it like that it’s a deal.

Rebecca: You’ve been underpaid.

Paul: Yeah, seriously underpaid! Okay, everybodys talked about such interesting… Well except for Andy… Everybody else has talked about such interesting topics and now I’m kind of quite embarrassed about mine. Because I want to talk about email! And just what a nightmare many people find email, which I’ve never entirely got because although I get a huge number of emails I never have more than, I don’t know, half a dozen/dozen emails in my inbox at any one time. Maybe a bit more if I have been particularly busy. I think a lot of it… Some of it is about how I approach email and my kind of, my working methodology in terms of I tend to use inbox zero so I process my emails and move them out of my inbox and I tend to only check email three times a day, that kind of thing. But setting all of that aside I think a big part of it these days is the tool that I use. So I wanted to quickly talk about the email client that I use these days which is one called Polymail. Now Polymail is a multi-platform tool so you can use it across a number of different platforms. I don’t know all of them but I certainly know that you get them for the Mac and iOS and stuff like that. It has got a number of nice features that I really like. The first one that I find really useful is the fact that when an email comes in you can kind of process it immediately. So you can, instead of going “Oh, I can’t deal with that now” and it just sits in your inbox you can say “I can’t deal with that now, hide it from me and show it to me later.” So you can easily set it to show it to you later today, this evening, tomorrow morning, tomorrow evening, this weekend, next week, next month, whatever. Which is really useful for kind of keeping your inbox clean and tidy and knowing where you stand with stuff. So that’s one thing that I really like about it. Another thing that’s really cool about it is that you can have a send later feature. So one of the problems with email, I often find, is that if you send… Reply to an email, you get an email. Right? Every time you send out an email it just generates another one in return. So sometimes it is like, sometimes, for example over this bank holiday weekend I have actually wanted to send some emails, right? To clear my email up. But I’ve actually delayed sending them until this morning. The reason being is because I didn’t want to get a reply that weekend. And also, to be honest, I didn’t want other people to have to deal with my emails over the bank holiday weekend. So that’s quite a useful one, the send later feature. Another one that I really like is that it has got associated tracking with it. So what that means is that you can see when someone has read the email and you can see when someone clicks on any of the links in the email. Which is really useful for just knowing whether someone has actually received it or not. You know when people take a long time to reply, which is fine, I understand that but you do begin to go “Has it ended up in their spam filters, et cetera et cetera.” So this means that you at least know that they have looked at it, which is a great feature. So it’s got all of these different really useful features. Probably the last one that I really quite like is that it provides you with like a little panel of interactions with a particular person. So it kind of pulls in their picture and that kind of stuff but you can see all of the emails that have ever gone back and forth between you and a particular person. And you can see all of the attachments that they have sent you as well which is really useful. So it’s got some really nice features in it that I just find a lot of other email clients don’t do quite as well. It’s not perfect, it is a little bit buggy at times, especially the Mac version I have found needs… you need to clear its cache every now and then. Whatever the hell that means. In order for it to update properly but generally speaking it is a really robust, good email client that integrates with most email systems. So it’s definitely… Oh yes, there is one last feature that I really do want to mention which is that it has got email templates. So for example every week I get hundreds of emails through from people going “Can I write a guest post for your blog.” Hundreds is an exaggeration but I get a lot. So every time I want to write back and say “No, we’re not accepting guest posts, it’s not how we operate but you can do a sponsored post if you want.” And I am saying the same thing every time. So now I can just select one of my templates and it automatically will just send that off to them which is really useful. So it’s got some great features and it is worth checking out.

Marcus: I tried Polymail when it first came out and everything was great apart from the interface because everything was too small for a old blind person like me.

Paul: Right.

Marcus: I expect, one would hope they have updated that. Interesting.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t know, is the honest answer to that because you know, I’m not blind!

Marcus: Well you are blind, but in a different way.

Paul: Yes, I’m blind in a different direction.

Marcus: Exactly.

Paul: So yeah. You would have to try it and see. I’m just having a look, I expect… Yeah, I don’t know. Give it another go, it’s come on quite a long way to be honest.

Marcus: I haven’t got a problem with Apple mail. It’s all right, it does the job.

Andy: Me too.

Paul: Yeah, and that’s fine, you know. Andy, what do you use?

Andy: I use Apple mail. Except now that I am a corporate shell I have to use Outlook on my Mac.

Marcus: Ooo, nasty!

Andy: I know! Which is very nasty thing. But, you know that’s what happens when you take a job isn’t it?

Rebecca: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. Rebecca, what about you? What do you use?

Rebecca: I use Gmail mostly for personal emails but since being at Ingenico I have had to, I have been given a Dell with Windows and Outlook on it.

Andy: Ooo,

Rebecca: I know! It’s offensive. (Laughter) It’s not even just Outlook on a Mac it is outlook on Windows. But no, Gmail mostly. I love Gmail. It’s my fave.

Andy: Do you have any of those electrical testing stickers on your laptop? Do they have to come round and make sure that your laptop is safe and they stick one of those like silver foil stickers on your laptop?

Rebecca: I don’t think so.

Marcus: They only have to go on the plugs over here Andy. Now you’ve moved to Australia it might be different over there.

Andy: Oh, okay. No, no. I’ve seen council workers on trains that have got half a dozen of these things. I saw one bloke once that he hefted this huge massive looking Lenovo or something out of his bag on a train and I swear to God the thing had about eight different annual stickers on it. When he opened up his laptop it booted into Windows NT or something like that. Rebecca has no idea what we are talking about by the way. Windows NT? No clue. Not a clue!

Rebecca: Never heard of it.

Paul: That’s incredible. Anyway, let’s wrap this baby up.

I just want to talk about Proposify which is our second sponsor and again I want to share some of my personal impressions of Proposify. It’s a simpler way to deliver proposals to your clients is the idea. It is a tool that I have actually used for many, many years and I admit, I actually don’t any more but I don’t think that that is a reflection on the app so much as on my own requirements and my own needs because, to be honest Proposify would be a little over-the-top for me because I don’t have to produce that many proposals. But that said there are actually quite a lot of functionality that I really miss that I don’t now have. So for example Proposify has some really good analytics in terms of how many times people had viewed your proposals, what they had looked at, you know, whether they had opened the email that went with the proposals. All of that kind of stuff. So they’ve got really good set of analytics for knowing how things are going with the proposals that you have sent out. The only thing that I really liked about them that I have not been able to quite replicate anywhere else is that they have this really powerful content library function. So almost a bit like the pre-done messages that I was talking about with Polymail a minute ago, you can take different bits of copy that you reuse from one proposal to another and keep them in this content library that you can then just drop in really easily. The great thing is you can even have placeholders within those content libraries where it will then replace that placeholder with the name of the client, the current clients. So you know how you’re always getting to that thing where you are copying and pasting stuff from one word documents into another and you end up sending the new client with the old client’s name in the proposal. So it avoids that kind of problem which is really good.

Marcus: It never happens with me.

Paul: I’m sure never! Never! You are infallible Marcus.

Marcus: Totally.

Paul: Exactly,

Marcus: Although I’ve got to say that if there was a way that I could somehow tag and label all of the bits of proposals that I have written over the last 15 years that would be fantastic. I would just have to kind of rely on my memory and just go back through looking at different folders that have been labelled with whatever the client was going “Yeah, that was about such and such so I can pull from that.” but to be able to reliably do it would be amazing.

Paul: Yeah. I mean the big problem you would have is you have got 15 years of material to put into Proposify!

Marcus: Yeah. (Laughter) It’s not going to happen.

Paul: In principle if you had a week to organise yourself it would be worth doing wouldn’t it?.

Marcus: Yeah.

Paul: But nobody ever has that week do they. The other thing that it has got which I really like is that it has got an iOS app and I do miss that. Just for kind of seeing what is going on with the proposals and being able to grab the links and that kind of thing. And they’ve got really good level of integration. They integrate with pretty much anything you can imagine from CRM’s to content management systems to accounting software, whatever and that is really useful. But for someone like me who rarely creates proposals these probably aren’t enough to make me go back to it but if you write a lot of proposals or you have a team, in particular if there is more than one of you writing a proposal then I just think it is probably the best tool out there for those kinds of situations. It is absolutely stunning. So you can find out more about it at proposify.biz/boagworld.

All right, well I think that about wraps it up for this show. Marcus,

Marcus: This season. Paul, season.

Paul: A final joke. This season, yeah.

Andy: I can’t believe this is the last one. This is possibly the last time that I will ever speak to you Paul.

Paul: Yeah, because we only speak professionally! (Laughter)

Marcus: Andy, you can come onto one of the shows next season, they go.

Andy: Thank you darling.

Paul: Well actually Andy there are two shows where Marcus is away so perhaps you could become my co-host.

Andy: Oh, I would love to. Count me in.

Marcus: On that subject, on the subject of next season I have asked those people in the office this morning if they would be up for doing a talk and they also said yes! Even Chris said yes!

Paul: Wow!

Marcus: He didn’t like… I made him say yes but he did say yes.

Paul: So Rebecca, are you going to do a little talk for us next season? Putting you on the spot.

Rebecca: Yes, sure. Yeah, I’ll do it, I’ll do anything. (Laughter)

Paul: So the way that it works is essentially we are going to do a whole series of little lightening talks. People prerecord talks on whatever they want to talk about and I have guaranteed, I am guaranteeing that I will publicise and promote every single talk I receive. Presuming it is not offensive or, you know, or wrong or inaudible. But basically I’m going to include everything. 45 of them we will actually include on the show itself. If I get more than 45, which to be honest is extremely unlikely, but if I get more than 45 then I am going to post the rest on my website. So they will be… All of them will be included. You can find out about how to do it and the process of submitting it which is really straightforward, by going to Boag.world/season18. If you got any concerns about it, any worries, any issues just drop me an email at Paul@Boagworld.com and I am happy to help you. Because I want as many people as possible to do this. So it is going to be awesome.

Andy: It’s going to be great.

Rebecca: That sounds really good.

Paul: Yeah, I reckon so. I want people that don’t do this kind of stuff as much to do it. You know, maybe, kind of always fancied the idea of talking at a conference but it also terrifies them in equal measure.

Rebecca: Is it just sound that you are going to do?

Paul: Yes.

Rebecca: Just sounds, cool.

Marcus: Which does make it… That is the tricky part, no slides but I guess you could have slides but we won’t be showing them. And Paul and I won’t be judging the talks in any way shape or form at all.

Paul: No.

Marcus: No, no!

Paul: No. The only thing I’m thinking about doing… You were joking, I’m not going to. I am determined, I want to do nothing but encourage people.

Marcus: We will be discussing them. We will be talking about them in between.

Paul: Yeah.

Marcus: “That was a good point well made” and things like that.

Paul: I’m only going to say positive things about all of them.

Marcus: Okay, we could have the equivalent of a square box, Paul, when you say something that isn’t positive.

Paul: Done. Every person… If I happen to say something that Marcus considers negative about your talk then I have to send you a copy of my e-book.

Marcus: Excellent.

Paul: There you go.

Rebecca: That’s a great idea. Yep.

Paul: So, I will only say positive things about it and pick out the bits that I like. The only way that I may be indicating that one is better than another, I am going to have what I call a Keynote presentation. So we’ve got three talks each season, sorry, each episode and one of them will be the keynote. Which is one I have picked out. The reason I’m doing that is basically because I want to name the show something! (Laughter) So I have to pick out one for those purposes. But other than that they are all the same.

Rebecca: Are there any restrictions on how many times people can send talks in?

Paul: No, they can send in as many as they want. If they want to do multiple… Because I am so sure I am not going to meet my 45 that I will keep accepting them.

Rebecca: So if you got like 20 people to send two in and then the rest you would just fill in with your own talks that would be perfect.

Paul: Yeah, if I do by some freak get more than 45 I’ll make sure that people who submit two talks only get one on the show and the other one will just go on the websites instead. But I mean I have to say the website gets almost as much traffic as the podcast anyway so it’s swings and roundabouts in terms of exposure. So yeah, I’m excited, it will be good. So Marcus, have you got a joke to wrap up with?

Marcus: I have. And this one is from Ian Lasky, long time no hear.

Paul: Ooo, good.

Marcus: Right, I called the RSPCA today and said “I just found a suitcase in the woods containing a fox and four cubs.” “That’s terrible.” they said “Are they moving?” “I’m not sure to be honest.” I said “But that would explain the suitcase.” (Laughter)

Rebecca: Oh, good one.

Andy: Oh, yeah!

Marcus: Took a while Andy!

Andy: It did. It was a Skype lag mate, that’s what it was.

Marcus: Oh yeah, right!

Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aha. So, Andy where can people find out more about you?

Andy: People can find more about me actually on Twitter at the moment @malarkey. That’s the best place to get me.

Paul: Okay, cool. Well thank you very much Rebecca for joining us on this week’s show.

Rebecca: Thank you for having me.

Paul: And for all of our regulars that have supported this season, in such a lovely way. And for you dear listener, it’s been a good one, it’s been a good one despite our audio battles I think we have covered some good stuff over this season but I am really excited for next season. Ooo, now professionally I should have been ready to say when that is going to be but I wasn’t. Hang on a minute!

Marcus: It’s sometime later, a few weeks time.

Paul: Later. Oh well, it’s a really easy one to remember. The show will return on 1st June. So there we go. So yeah, we’re going to have a couple of weeks off, or a few weeks off and we are going to be back with our lightning talk season but until then thank you for listening and goodbye.

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About Paul Boag

Paul Boag is a user experience consultant, author and speaker. He helps not-for-profits such as the European Commission, UCAS and Doctors Without Borders adapt to the digital world. He also works with many sizeable commercial clients. He refocuses them on user experience and engaging with a new digitally savvy audience. All the while pursuing his not-so-hidden agenda.